Doctors' Hospital opened on Monday

As the doors of Riverside Doctors' Hospital opened at 6 a.m. Monday, maintenance personnel used a cherry-picker to reach and flip the light switch beneath the Emergency sign. The main action, though, was on the second floor, where two surgery patients were checking in. James Hall, 71, and his wife, Ruth, drove from Charles City for arthroscopic surgery on his knee. Hall, the first patient to receive an X-ray in the Williamsburg hospital's imaging department, recalled with satisfaction that as a 13-year-old boy he had met the first patient at Riverside's first hospital on 50th St. in Newport News. "Now, I'm the first one here," he said.

Michelle Hanson-Hart, 45, who "lives just down the street" from the 40-bed hospital, expressed excitement at being in a new facility. She was occupying her wait for a minimally invasive gynecological procedure by playing Solitaire on a tabletop computer screen. Her surgeon, Karanvir Virk, had been visiting the site daily for a week. "I've just been coming here to make sure everything's in place and to get to know the personnel. It's like starting a new affair, you have to get used to each other," he said.

The idea for the hospital in Williamsburg's southeast quadrant started eight or nine years ago, according to Dan Carr, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine physician with the independent practice TPMG (Tidewater Physicians Multispecialty Group), and a long-time Williamsburg resident. Carr was part of the original board and now works in community outreach for the Doctors' Hospital. "The town is big enough. It was a natural transition from the Doctors' Surgery Center, an outpatient center built nine years ago. Hence the name," he said. "It's an amazing accomplishment."

The hospital has a 33-bed medical surgical department, and an emergency department, operating rooms, imaging facilities, a lab and transitional care unit.

Over the first hour, about 100 employees trickled in, along with almost 80 vendors and support staff there to set up equipment and teach staff in its use. By 8 a.m. the parking lot was full and hospital administrator Steve McCary was instructing employees to move their cars to make way for arriving patients. Also working hard behind the scenes were Robert Harding, one of three hospitalists, and Arlene Messina, director of nursing and patient care; both were touring the building making sure that everyone and everything was in place.

For Stephanie Rivers, clinical coordinator of the intensive care unit, the slow start was ideal. "It gives us a chance to ease into it and come together as a team," she said, noting that several of her 17-member staff are new to Riverside. The large private rooms all have large windows to let in natural light and a pull-out sofa to accommodate a guest. Rivers demonstrated several new technologies in place: a signal system outside each room that automatically lights up green to signal a nurse is present, pink for a therapist and so forth; ascom phones that allow nurses to communicate directly; and a PIK machine for lab orders that scans a nurse's badge and patient's bracelet before making a printout. "The lab uses it. Now we finally have it. It has reduced errors to zero where they're used," Rivers said.